Steppe Lively!
Blimey, it has been some time since I last published a hortic post here. I’ve been very busy working, studying and writing ‘stuff’ elsewhere! Anyway, having had a nudge from a colleague recently, I managed to find a vacant and warm afternoon in which to visit the Dunnett-designed rooftop gardens at the Barbican centre in London. Having had the challenge of replacing the somewhat out-dated plantings of the 1980’s, Nigel Dunnett (Professor at Sheffield University) and his team began planting the Beech Gardens back in March 2015. The original planting featured areas of lawn, bedding (Yikes!) and bold architectural plants such as Phormiums and Cordylines. These had rather outgrown the site, requiring heavy irrigation and brought many structural problems to the site also. Ageing design, over-mature plants and leaky irrigation prompted the City Corporation to have a radical rethink. The Barbican ‘complex’ is ...